By

Paul Wotton, Ph.D., CEO of Sigilon Therapeutics

By

Dr. Joel Calmet, Senior Director of Communications at Sanofi-Pasteur

On The Cover

Transformation: Is the Industry Ready?
Although the pharma industry scored pretty low on a McKinsey scale of digital maturity, there is evidence that it is moving — perhaps only incrementally — toward a digital transformation that can streamline processes, generate collaboration, and coordinate data collection. The pharma sector, not surprisingly, is also lagging behind other industries in digital performance. According [...]

By

Robin Robinson

Features

Client-Agency Relationships 101
We could write a book — and many have — on all of the necessary ingredients to create a successful partnership in the life-sciences space of client-agency relationships. But instead, we’ve asked our thought leaders to focus on three vital issues: what is needed to build and maintain strong relationships with their pharma clients; the [...]

The Future of Blockchain in Clinical Research
Imagine this: a group of pre-identified, pre-screened patients are remotely enrolled in a clinical trial, their private health records accessed and validated instantaneously upon consent. The investigative product is traced from inception to consumption by each individual patient; ensuring quality is documented and maintained. Then using remote patient authenticated mobile and wearable devices, validated patient [...]

By

Julie Ross, President, Advanced Clinical

The Transformational Power of Sharing
Decades of progress in information technology reveal, however, that as individuals and in the collective, we constantly struggle to find balance between the benefits of sharing and our desire to keep control. The mainframe computer was cheered as it enabled a corporation to share information that had previously been locked in metal file cabinets lining [...]

By

Beenu Kapoor, Senior Director, Cognizant Consulting

Build a Road, Not a Roadblock — What Sites Want Sponsors To Know
Their message is loud and clear — technology has the potential to be a site’s best friend, but it’s often a roadblock instead. That’s just one of the many insights learned from the sites who participated in a thoughtful panel discussion focused on how they feel about the past, present, and future of clinical technology. [...]

RWE Continues to Shape the Future Clinical Research Landscape
The increasing availability of big data is creating a shift in the clinical research landscape — from trial planning to late-phase — allowing for clinical research professionals to make intelligent, strategic decisions based on real-world evidence (RWE), which is derived from the aggregation and analysis of real-world data (RWD). In addition, RWE is being used [...]

By

Jim Carroll, VP, Real World Evidence, ICON plc

Transforming the Life-Science and Healthcare Workforce
In today’s rapidly changing market, organizations and workforce experts alike are trying to determine how the future of work will transform. However, most professionals operate from the perspective of their individual scope of responsibility, which often leads to narrow perspectives that may solve one aspect of the challenge — yet create another problem. Based on [...]

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Kevin D. Duffy, Global VP, Life Science & Healthcare, KellyOCG

Community-Based Clinical Trials — The New “Virtual”
Long recruitment timelines and under-performing sites are the most frequently discussed topics in the clinical trials sector. With actual recruitment timelines double the planned expectations, at least 39% of sites under-enroll and 11% of sites fail to enroll a single patient1, new technological advances are often heralded as holding the answer to these problems. In [...]

By

Dr. Graham Wylie, CEO, Medical Research Network

When Patients Control Their Data, Clinical Researchers Win
From a young age, we learn to share, but when it comes to the collection and management of clinical research data, the opposite is more often true. Then why is the question still being asked whether patient data should be shared and accessible by patients themselves? The journey towards betterment is complicated and doesn’t happen [...]

By

Anthony Costello, VP, Mobile Health, Medidiata

Is Your eClinical System a Mixed Tape or a Playlist?
Just a decade ago, the most advanced option for listening to music at home was a large stereo system made up of a jumble of separate components, all with specific functions, from a half-dozen brands. Not only were these stereo systems bulky they were also expensive, complex to set up and run, only able to [...]

AI and the Cloud: Changing the Clinical Trial Experience
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that there are a number of exciting life-science industry trends that will profoundly influence clinical trial solutions in the years to come. Chief among them are: Patient engagement and patient centricity will be king, driving digital transformation with IoT and AI. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will change [...]

Pediatric Drug Development: Regulatory Updates to Know
All applications for marketing authorization for new medicines must include the results of studies in children as described in the pediatric plan, unless the medicine is exempt because of a deferral or waiver. Pediatric legislation internationally has led to better medicines for children, but gaps still exist that regulatory agencies want to close. How will [...]

By

Dr. Martine Dehlinger-Kremer, VP, Pediatric Development, Synteract

Rare Disease Studies: Patient-Focused Approaches
The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) indicates that there are approximately 7,000 medical conditions that qualify for a rare disease designation. In the United States, this is defined as an affected population with a prevalence of fewer than 200,000 patients. Because there is a great unmet need for novel therapies to address these rare [...]

R&D Leaders On Leadership
What makes for a great leader? Many books and articles exist to try to tease out the qualities and behaviors that make good leaders great. Many of these detail that leaders inspire employees, position their companies for innovation and change, and they have integrity and the courage to lead. A McKinsey survey in 2015 of [...]

By

Denise Myshko

GoBoldly: A Reputation-Enhancing Effort
We’ve all seen the commercials. They feature patients living with serious diseases and the researchers working to develop innovative therapies. These ads focus on the science and the breakthroughs being made in medicine. They end with what looks like a genetic analysis giving way to the words America’s Biopharmaceutical Companies. The commercials aim to showcase [...]

By

Denise Myshko

Regenerative Medicine: The Dawn of a New Age of Biology
Regenerative medicine could completely shake up the way diseases are treated. According to Reportlinker, the regenerative medicine market will reach an estimated .55 billion by 2025 thanks to the rapid growth of stem cell and gene therapy in developed markets. Scott Bruder, M.D., Ph.D., founder and CEO of Bruder Consulting and Venture Group, describes regenerative [...]

By

Kim Ribbink

Red Zone: Personalized Medicine Requires Personalized Measurement
CNS is the second largest area of pharmaceutical research, but the success rate has been low and approvals rare. In CNS drug development, it is common for investigational therapies to show promising effects in earlier trials, only to fail in the final stages of testing. Some of the reasons can be attributed to the technical [...]

By

Sofija Jovic, PhD., MBA Business Transformation Advisor, WCG

Speak Out
Understanding The Why Applying health psychology to deliver effective patient support As a health and clinical psychologist, I’ve spent the last ten years helping the healthcare industry address the self-management needs of patients living with long-term conditions. For the most part, this work has involved collaborating with pharma to support patients to take their medication [...]